US President Donald Trump personally constitutes an additional factor of volatility for international money and capital markets, for stocks, bonds, commodities and currencies. This is because he is unpredictable, he moves outside any framework – political, geopolitical, economic – and no one can predict his next moves.
In addition to the moves he had announced by imposing tariffs on the European Union, China, Canada and Mexico, as president he is now showing strange expansionist tendencies towards other countries, which he wants to integrate into the US. He started with Greenland, which he has stated that he will either buy from Denmark or occupy it militarily. He continued with Canada, which he announced that he will annex to the US, then he stated that he will take the Canal from Panama and now he has announced that the US will take the Gaza Strip, which they will rebuild by transforming it into the Riviera of the Middle East and sell the houses to people from all over the world. As for the Palestinians, he says that he will find them a “wonderful piece of land” in Jordan or Egypt so that they can live peacefully without being killed. When a journalist told him that the Egyptians and Jordanians did not agree, he replied that “they will not refuse us and will open their arms to the Palestinians,” who of course have no opinion, nor does it matter what they want in the US president’s scenario.
All of these, President Trump’s outrageous plans for international public opinion, are causing huge fluctuations in the markets. The same goes for his announcements about imposing tariffs, about cryptocurrencies, about the exploitation of hydrocarbons.
Every word he utters causes spectacular changes in stock prices, bond and commodity values, and currency exchange rates. And it is completely unpredictable what he will say next, as well as whether what he will say will ultimately come to pass.
For example, the measures he announced for Mexico and Canada a few days after their announcement were frozen and their implementation was postponed for a month. Most of his demands are impossible to meet, such as increasing European imports from the US, for the simple reason that the European Union is not the Soviet Union so that Von der Leyen can decide what will be imported and from where – European importers will import what is in their best interest. As is obvious, regardless of what Trump believes or wants to do, that the occupation of territories belonging to other countries does not happen by magic, it happens by war. I don’t know how he will convince, for example, the Palestinians to leave Gaza or the Egyptians to give them a “wonderful piece of land to live there in peace,” or how he will convince the Canadians to stop being a country and become a State of the United States.
We cannot yet understand what is going on in Trump’s mind. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is the impact of what he says. And the impact on international money and capital markets is the triggering of major fluctuations. It is impossible for an investor at this time to avoid risk, no matter what investment he chooses. He can suddenly gain a lot or lose a lot, or even gain a lot for a few days and be ruined the next day, as the president says or does the exact opposite of what he had initially said or done. Trump himself and his cronies Elon Musk could make billions in the markets just by playing with their statements, but this is not the case for anyone outside their inner circle. For everyone else, the markets are now uncharted territory where the familiar methods of assessing risk and opportunity do not apply. Unforeseen fluctuations are the only certainty and all other certainty has disappeared.
Of course, along with the uncertainty in the markets, geopolitical instability has also increased greatly, as has political uncertainty in all countries, because no one knows what new idea the US president will utter or which politician and which government he will support or dismantle.
In conclusion, then, at the moment uncertainty reigns everywhere, which comes from the unpredictable factor “Trump”, and this means that large and unpredictable fluctuations are the daily routine of the markets.
This also applies to small markets, since the largest investors are foreigners and can at any time liquidate their positions in the small regional market of each country in order to cover losses from the large markets in which they operate.
And of course the currency, bonds, the cost of raw materials, energy and commodities in small markets are automatically affected by international fluctuations in the corresponding markets. The same goes for tourism, which is a main source of income, which is very sensitive to geopolitical turmoil, but also to international economic developments.
In this volatile and uncertain situation, the appetite of many gambling investors is whetted, hoping for huge profits. Indeed, these may exist, but there may also be huge losses.
Therefore, the recommended investment strategy for the small gambler investor who saves and wants to invest well is to invest amounts that he will not miss if he loses them, because it is very likely that he will lose them even if he has doubled them first.
